


Close Encounters of the Third Kind

by Ijustwannaread



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aliens, BAMF Tony Stark, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mission Fic, Sick Tony Stark, Team Dynamics, remember when the avengers were just going on missions and no one died?, sure it's 2019 but let's pretend it's 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2020-04-06 23:50:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19073200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ijustwannaread/pseuds/Ijustwannaread
Summary: Post-New York, aliens seem to be constantly invading Earth, and fighting them off is now a full-time job for the Avengers. Enter: Tony Stark's shitty immune system.





	1. Chapter 1

"Are you drunk?" Clint asks. Tony squints across the room at him, and doesn't answer.

His voice sounds like a running garbage disposal, so he figures this is the most merciful option. Clint takes the lack of answer as an affirmation, and gives him a face that indicates he's either impressed or jealous. It's ten in the morning.

Natasha comes up to Clint and offers one of the three pistols in her hands -- sleek and classy. The third one is clearly an antique, but rusted, clunky, and Tony thinks it would be a miracle if it wasn't jammed.

"What the hell is that?” Tony says despite himself. He can't help it- it's terribly designed and terrible design is hard for a gear head to ignore. Tony's half convinced it's rigged to explode. He needs to get his hands on it.

Natasha scowls at him. "I've been using this gun since before I joined SHIELD."

"I didn't know you joined SHIELD in the middle ages." Tony says, just as the gun disappears somewhere on her person like some scary assassin magic trick.

"You look like shit.” Natasha says, eyeing Tony with the particular stony expression that he is beginning to interpret as friendly concern. He would feel defensive, but he's still reveling in this epiphany that the Black Widow has a _nostalgic_ side. He might actually have the upper hand here.

“You hiding anything else in there?” He said, gesturing to her outfit. “A crossbow? An old-timey musket?”

His ploy works, and she rolls her eyes (affectionately?) and leaves.

Tony is glad that, while the Stark Tower is always available for the Avengers to return to in New York, it's not really anyone's home base. He himself just flew in last morning to try to touch base with Banner. Which means that the when Clint and Natasha disappear back to the armory to practice with every flavor of ineffective weaponry, he's alone to dissolve into a long, painful but satisfying coughing fit. It seems to go on forever.

There's a warm hand on his back when he finally takes a real breath again. "So that sucked," he says conversationally.

It's Bruce. Obnoxiously, early. "Are you alright?" he asks, adjusting his glasses.

"Apparently not." His lungs are still burning. “You got any good drugs?”

“Not that kind of doctor,” Bruce says good-naturedly. “You still want to work on the project today? I can stay here through the week if you want to hold off until you feel better.”

“Ugh, nope. Sounds worse than it is.”

“Hope it feels better than it looks,” Bruce says, in his gentle way that almost makes him forget that he was basically just told he looks like shit for the second time that day.

“Rude.” He says, but otherwise just leads the way to the lab.

As they're in the elevator, JARVIS cuts in with, “Sir, Steve Rogers is entering the tower,”

“What? I thought he was on business in-” He mutters, but his foggy mind really can't place where Rogers was supposed to be. “All right, where's he headed? Let's rendezvous. Must be important if Cap's made a special trip uptown,” Tony says to Bruce, who is undeniably giving him an assessing glance. If they've been called to assemble, some judgement calls were going to have to be made.

“Fury called. ” Steve is reliably short on small-talk. He's also dressed in his street clothes, which makes Tony believe that this might be a stealth mission best left to the assassins, not for the muscle of the team. Thankfully.

“Fury talking in riddles again?” Tony asks. Steve looks like he's really struggling to fight the impulse to bitch about his commanding officer. It's almost too easy with Steve.

“Only if “we might have an alien invasion” is a riddle to you, Stark,” Steve replies.

“Might?” Bruce says. “Last time I checked, there are either aliens or there aren't.”

“See, that's the riddle, Banner,” Tony says, and then turns to his pad to start hacking into SHIELD.

“Stark, before you raid SHIELD's database, why don't I debrief?”

“Shouldn't you wait for the-” He starts, before realizing that Clint and Natasha have both materialized. “Fuck.” He says, as Natasha smirks at him almost imperceptibly. And they call him a brat.

Steve explains the situation, which is, yep, definitely a riddle, and they all head to the jet to meet up with Fury, who obnoxiously only gave them coordinates to meet and no further info.

Steve hangs back on the way to the roof, catches Tony before he can follow the others.

"You look sick." He says. He stares at Tony with those piercing blue eyes and an expression that resides in some mystical space between totally inscrutable and entirely transparent.

“Well, aliens timed their invasion perfectly then, didn't they?” Tony replies lightly, and then leads the way onto the tarmac.

Steve follows closely behind, and Tony can practically feel the tension rolling off him. But, come to think of it, when does he not exude that kind of energy?

Time honestly gets a bit blurry after that. Fury is talking sternly as the jet rushes them to Arkansas of all places. Tony thinks distantly that he's glad that the aliens decided to show up in what was likely a corn field. Pepper would be glad that they wouldn't have to cancel their trip to Rome after Tony would inevitably need to throw a new chunk of money at the Avenger's Massive Collateral Damage Fund. His mind drifts again, and he's thinking about white sandy beaches and the way that Pepper's hair looks wet from sea spray and brilliant against the bright blue sky.

“What's our move?” Steve asks, and Tony tunes back in for the good bit.

“Come in with everything at once, don't give them a second of warning. This is not the time for subtlety. We're going to drop the stealth and as soon as we do, you're going to hammer them. ”

“Got anything new up your sleeve, Stark?” Fury asks. Tony smiles even though he feels a pit in his stomach. The Mark 11 just finished beta testing, and it's buggy as hell, but since when has that ever stopped him?

“Yeah, and it's a pretty efficient way to say Piss-Off, Foul Invaders. I just need everyone to gimme front and center on landing and stay out of line,” he says.

“Works for me,” Clint says, running a finger over the tip of a free arrow and smirking as though he's ever anywhere out of the shadows during a fight.

“Alright gang, we're there ten seconds. Look alive,” Maria commands from the cockpit.

Tony slides his mask down, but wishes that he had a free hand to slap himself awake. He moves towards the edge and taps Bruce on the shoulder.

“On my six? I made this thing Alien Fucker proof but I think the Big Guy can take it,”

“Nice,” Bruce sighs.

The hatch opens and Tony launches into the sky. They arrives at dusk, and the first thing he sees is the oranges and red. And then he sees the great depressions in the fields of earth below, presumably left by the giant visitors. They are covered in thick armor, and seem to be congregating in some strange ritualistic circle around a mysterious hulking piece of technology that is rooted in the earth like a great metal tree stump. Upon further inspection, they look more like robots than anything humanoid, but he's still too high in the sky to really see them in detail. Tony wonders briefly, not for the first time on an Avengers mission, if he has lost his mind.

Instead of further contemplating the bizarre scene in front of him, Tony pulls back a panel on his forearm and presses a delicate switch. Immediately, his suit starts vibrating almost imperceptibly as energy concentrates in his repulsors.

“Cap, you want any of them left in commission?” He asks the comm.

“One will do,” comes the grim reply.

“Alright, Jarvis, do your thing,” Tony commands, and he unleashes his latest tech on the army. Instantly, an enormous surge of power ripples through his suit, driving his mild headache to a splitting level. Just as he had debuted with Iron Patriot earlier, his suit releases rays of red hot heat, but this time they are targeted specifically at the attackers, whose thick armor took more seconds of being barbecued than Tony expects to before yielding. Finally, all but one drop to the earth.

Natasha and Steve are already on the ground, charging at the remaining alien form when Tony switches off his weapon. When the burst cuts off, the suit's stabilizers immediately go haywire, flinging him backwards without any sense of direction.

After a few harrowing moments, the system boots back up, and Tony regains control just before he hits the treeline. It isn't quite enough to stop him from pummeling into a tree branch.

“Yikes, you good?” Tony looks up to see Hawkeye crouched in a branch above him. Tony would have felt a flare of embarrassment if he hadn't had the wind solidly knocked out of him. He considers it a win that he mutes him comm in time to let out a loud wheeze.

Tony is still trying to find the air to complain about the lack of productivity on Hawkeye's part for all his snarking when Hawkeye draws back his bow and an arrow whistles out of sight. It must meet it's mark because a sickening crunch sounds through the rustling leaves.

“You good?” He repeats, voice only betraying a hint of lingering smugness.

Tony tries again to answer, but realizes that he might not, in fact, be good. While his vision is slowly becoming less blurry, drawing in breaths is a laborious process, hindered both by his lingering illness and the blow to his sternum from the tree. This is why doctors recommend rest when people are sick, Tony thinks to himself.

“Yep,” he affirms into the comm, because he might fit under some definitions of okay.

“Jarvis, autopilot?” The suit heaves itself into a standing position, and gives a quick scope of the surroundings. There don't appear to be any more lingering alien robot forms, although Tony suspects that Hawkeye's creepily acute senses might actually have a leg up on his AI, which he can tell would prefer to focus on mother-henning him than scanning for possible threats. Luckily, Tony seems to have regained control of his breathing, if he's covered in a cold sweat, aching all over, and can still hear a ringing in his ears. The new technology was awesome, but maybe best left for a day when he didn't already feel like a light breeze could knock him over.

“Stark, get over here,” Steve's voice sounds over the comm, driving a sledgehammer into Tony's headache. Tony hears an urgency in his tone that makes him reconsider any snappy comebacks his brain might spit out.

“Got you covered from here,” Hawkeye says, nodding in his direction and not moving an inch. Tony gives him a sarcastic salute and fires off towards the main circle in the field.

It only takes him a second to arrive at the monstrosity. It is surrounded by tall grasses laden with defunct robotic soldiers. Natasha and Steve are standing next to it and eyeing it as though it's a gigantic sleeping tiger. The image is almost comical, until Tony gets closer and realizes that it's letting out a low hum with an eerie ticking noise on top that is certainly one of the more ominous things he's heard in his life.

“Any idea what this is?” Steve asks him, not taking his eyes off of the thing.

Tony inspects it further, and his suit dutifully provides a scan inside at the complex mass of wires and circuits, connected to a pulsing power source. It's not like anything Tony has ever seen before, but he knows instinctively what it is.

“Yeah, that's a bomb,” he says simply. Natasha and Steve break out of their fixation on it and look at him, alarmed.

“What?” Steve asks. “Are you sure?”

“Trust me. It's kind of my thing,” Tony says.

“What kind?” Natasha can always be trusted to be a stone cold calculating bitch, Tony marvels.

He scans the data rapidly, but it's too complex to get a full read on.

“Big,” he settles for by way of reply.

“Nat, you and Hawkeye need to get the jet and secure a perimeter. Banner, I need you over here,” Natasha's eyes darken, but she nods curtly and strides off.

“Bomb definitely doesn't sound like a Big Guy problem,” Bruce says, appearing from behind one of the massive bodies.

“Big giant hunk of metal does,” Tony breaks in. “The wiring is under a panel that's – Jarvis?”

“Thirty-six centimeters of solid titanium alloy.”

“That,” Tony says. Steve whistles.

“Right,” says Bruce shortly. He's already tinged green. Tony and Steve take unconscious steps back as the Hulk looms to his full height. He fixes his stormy eyes and them and they both just point at the giant metal bomb and say in union: “Smash.”

The Hulk smiles his grim smile and promptly rips a massive chunk out of the object like it were a big slab of butter, and hurls it behind him. The five ton projectile soars right in the direction of Tony and Steve, and they both hit the ground in order to avoid getting hit by the equivalent weight of a semi-truck.

“Christ,” Steve breathes.

“That'll be two Hail Mary's, Cap,” says Tony, foisting himself back up with difficulty. Steve huffs, but Tony likes to think it's kind of a laugh.

With a flick of his wrists, the suit unfurls around Tony and steps out of it shakily.

“What the hell are you doing?” Steve asks. Tony just climbs into the hole and edges towards the center.

“Bombs are more of a delicate thing. Suit's not big on dexterity.” Tony calls back, cracking his knuckles for emphasis.

“Suit's definitely better at keeping you alive if this thing goes up,” Steve says, following him into the metal crater. Tony pulls at a wire and inspects the massive pulsating power source it's connected to.

“Rogers, hate to break it to you, but there's not much that this bomb wouldn't vaporize and my suit is not on that special list,” Tony says. Steve doesn't even flinch, he just sets his jaw. Tony wonders briefly if maybe instead of making a super solider serum his father ought to have found a way to bottle what ever made Steve Rogers tick. “You might wanna join Nat on the perimeter,” he adds.

Steve ignores him dutifully in favor of speaking to the comms.

“Nat, updates?”

“We've got a small town about three quarters of a mile out,” says Natasha.

“And a campground out my way. Can't tell how many yet, they're pretty spread out,” Clint adds.

Tony tries breathes out slowly against a swell of panic at the thought of civilians in jeopardy, but it turns into a cough which he has to choke back from continuing.

“We tried to talk to the ones you left, but they deactivated as soon as their inner circle was compromised, “ Steve explains, helpfully ignoring how rough Tony sounds. “This thing started humming as soon as they were all down, so I think it might have been primed to go in case they were infiltrated.” Steve says in a hurry.

“I can't find a count down,” Tony says, frenetically pulling at the wires and stray panels of displaying only an incomprehensible language and interface.

“My guess is soon,” Steve says, tone matter of fact. “How can I help?”

“Probably by getting he hell out,” he says.

“Not a chance. No offense, Tony, but you need help,” Steve says, looking pointedly at Tony's hands, which are shaking slightly from pain and exhaustion. Tony becomes aware he probably looks liable to pass out.

“I'm pretty good at taking orders, just tell me what to do,” he asks again. Tony wonders if this is what Steve Rogers sense of humor looks like. If so, oh boy. Tony takes a painful breath, as deep as he can muster.

“Okay, if you see any wires connected to a piece that looks like this,” Tony holds up a large red circuit, “ Just pull that fucker out.” Steve nods, and clambers deftly up a piece of metal siding to pull one far out of Tony's reach.

After they gather a pile of wires, the pulsing has become louder and the once gentle ticking has gotten more shrill, going faster and faster. Tony realizes they are already too late.

“Steve,” he grinds out. Steve slides off a step metal ledge and is next to him in a tick.

“What is it?” Steve asks, looking like he'd really rather not hear the answer. He throws aside the latest disconnected wire into his already impressive pile.

“There's no way we can stop all the signals from going through. There's not enough time,” Tony said.

“Stark, there's no one who's better at this than you, not even these guys-whoever the hell they are,” Steve fixes him with such an earnest look that something in Tony's overtaxed brain can't help but come back online. Wildly, Yinsen's face pops into his mind, with his simple look that dared him to do better. God, how did he keep running with these no-nonsense Get-It-Done types? Every time he just wanted to roll over someone had to come on the scene and wordlessly let him know it was time to get off his ass.

“Okay. Okay. Okay,” he said, and squinted his eyes shut while scrubbing at his forehead. “Get Nat on the line. I think if he dismantle the power source at the root and get it to go into a feedback loop, I can exponentially decrease the power of the blast. As long as it's range isn't on the outside of my estimates, it should stay within this field. As long as we can get out in time, this is the best I can do,” Tony said. Steve pulled a heavy smile.

“Works for me,” he says.

“Make sure Banner ready to get out of here?” Tony requests, already crawling deep into the belly of the machine and performing a complicated series of deft re-wirings, mentally calculating as he went along. He's sure Steve is doing something, but he becomes instantly hyper focused on the task at hand.

The he cuts the last necessary connection, the persistent buzzing stops dead. However, the ticking noise takes on a new decibel, blaring like a fire alarm and reverberating through the forest of metal and wires. Tony struggles to find purchase to get out.

Suddenly, a hand grabs at his bicep and pulls him up as though he were weightless.

“Sounds like it's time to go,” Steve says, pulling him forward.

“You don't say, Rogers,” Tony replies faintly, and allows himself to be half-pulled towards the dark entrance. With each footfall, the ticks strike like a pounding heartbeat.

They burst into the outside. The stars in the sky swirl sickeningly bright, and are luckily covered by the descending jet. His suit already piloted itself into the hatch, so Steve and Tony sprint to follow. They clamber on and the second their feet meet the opening, Natasha punches it and they move forward.

The door has only halfway closed behind them when a sharp pop comes from the alien vessel. Tony knows what will follow.

There is a blast that Tony can feel rock his entire body, and a surge of heat from the crack left in the jet's door. They surge forward and away, leaving Tony and Steve thrown backwards into the panel with the force of it.

“Shit,” Hawkeye says, loud enough over the ringing in Tony's ears. “Did that thing just self-destruct?” Tony distantly assumes this means that it didn't go nuclear as it was supposed to, which registers as a positive. Still, the events are starting to feel very far away, and he doesn't trust himself to move or breathe.

“Everyone in one piece?” Bruce asks hesitantly. There is a smattering of vague affirmatives. Tony attempts to give a cool, witty one, but what does come out of his mouth is a sound more close to, “Nargh...”

“Nice work, Stark,” Steve says, relief flooding in his tone. Tony feels a wash of relief himself, coupled with an intense come-down from the adrenaline that was keeping him mildly afloat. Steve is already giving commands and talking about getting back in contact with Fury, who has apparently become elusive again, before Tony realizes he hasn't moved an inch since their escape.

He attempts to stride over to check on his suit, but only makes it a half step before his knee buckles from under him. He lurches over, vision blurring.

“Woah, hey! ” Steve says. With his super-soldier speed, he's at Tony's side in an instant, preventing him from fully hitting the ground.

“Tony!” Says Bruce, rounding it out and supporting him from the other side. Tony can't bring himself to answer, since he's tapping out all his mental resources trying to get his legs back underneath him. They feel incredibly shaky and uncoordinated, and he doesn't want to have to be bodily dragged to his seat. He has some dignity, after all.

Steve's hand is still grasping his shoulder when he manages to find a semblance of purchase, and the grip stays on him like an anchor even when Tony manages a controlled fall into his seat in the jet. Steve seems to be inspecting him for bullet holes. Must be nice to be so impenetrable that the concept of being felled by illness doesn't register.

There is a moment of silence, filled by the faint sound of metal clinking together like an engine running. Tony registers that he's shaking so hard that it's faintly visible through the armor. That won't do.

“Jarvis,” he grits out, “Suit off. Now.”

“Yes, sir,” Jarvis replies, and Tony kicks himself for coding that edge that's creeping into the AI's tone.

The suit quickly begins folding away from his body, letting in a cold draft that doesn't help Tony from shaking like a leaf. Bruce and Steve, who had relaxed a bit once Tony didn't seem in danger of swooning, tense up, watching him closely.

Tony scrubs his hands over his face.

“What the hell was that out there?” He asks, addressing the second elephant in the room. It is somehow easier to tackle than the one about his physically falling apart at the seams.

“We have imaging from the jet of whatever that was that blew up,” Natasha says from the front of the jet. She's scanning through something on the dash.

Steve folds his arms and manages to furrow his brow even more deeply. It's almost comforting. Steve doesn't have a poker face like Natasha or even Clint, and it's nice to think someone else is still freaked out by alien invaders with unknown tech.

“What ever it is, it isn't good,” he says.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which aliens attempt to be polite and fail miserably, then a daring escape is made.

“I just got through to Fury. He wants us to rendezvous at the tower and debrief ASAP,” Natasha calls from the cockpit, already stoically dialing in the coordinates. Tony would have complained and announced his plans to take a vacation had he not remembered that new GP in Manhattan that Pepper had dragged him to go see last month. The guy had a thick prescription pad just itching to prescribe him something that would knock him on this ass for few hours and kick whatever this shit was.

Steve finally sits down and pulls the seat buckle across his broad chest, scrubbing his face with his hands. Tony feels a wave of annoyance wash over him. Steve really needs to learn how to celebrate the victories. An expertly diffused bomb only ever seems to get a grim smirk at best before that painfully stoic line returns to his forehead. Bruce is taking a note from Steve's book and chewing anxiously on the end of his glasses. Clint, thankfully, is whistling off-key to himself while sharpening an arrow.

“Okay, before we do the whole 9-5 conference thing with Fury, I am getting us all shots. Geez, we save a small town, and you all act like we just watched the end of _Marley and Me,”_ Steve's eyebrow raises at the angle that indicated his sense of humor was just barely online. Tony points at him accusingly.

“You're getting a double. No, a triple-” Steve cracks a smirk.

“I think a shot of anything other than cough syrup might just sent you directly into a coma,” Bruce says, smiling faintly and sitting back in his seat.

“Oh, now you're gonna be that kind of doctor?” Tony asks, lightly. Bruce cocks his head, all fake innocence that might scare the absolute shit out of most people.

“Besides, I have statistically significant evidence that no amount of alcohol can actually kill a Stark, I mean there was this time in college-”

Suddenly, the entire jet is engulfed in a white light that blanks out any sight, accompanied by an ear-splitting ringing sound. The sensation lasts for what is either a second or an hour, Tony can't honestly be sure.

When the light finally subsides, Tony realizes with a jolt that he is no longer sitting in the jet, but in what appears to be large, ornate, but entirely unfurnished room. There is an actual chandelier on the ceiling, and an large, gilded mirror on the what looked like polished mahogany walls. It reminds Tony of his parents' uninviting summer home upstate that he used to go to before finally escaping off to tech camps in the city.

“Oh my God, am I in hell?” Tony mumbles, rubbing at his eyes and trying to grasp at a semblance of reality. There is a distinct chance he is experiencing a vivid fever dream.

“Oh good, he's all caught up,” Bruce's voice carries sardonically from somewhere in room. Tony looks over to his left, and realizes that Bruce is sitting cross-legged on the floor next to him. “I was worried that they'd turned you into a vegetable,” he says, and then sits up on his knees to feel at Tony's lymph nodes. As the room finally makes it to full focus, Tony realizes that he is sitting on the floor, slumped against the wall. Steve, Clint and Natasha seem to be examining the walls very carefully. More than likely looking for an escape route than inspecting the quality of the wood.

Tony swats Bruce's hands away, and pulls himself stiffly up. He regrets it instantly. His legs feel like mince meat, and his chest tightens as soon as he's vertical.

“Anyone care to share how we ended up here?” He asked, trying to disguise how he was fighting not to swallow convulsively against a bought of nausea.

“They fucking whammied us, I just woke up before you,” Clint explained, shaking his head. He scrapes an arrow against the wall, as if he half hoped to find it was made of incredibly elaborately disguised paper-mache.

“Should I even ask about phone signal?” Tony asks.

“I wouldn't,” Natasha says. She looks a second away from punching a wall. He can't help but take out his phone, which is stone cold dead. He throws it on the floor in front of them, then takes off his watch and throws it down with the others. Step One of surviving in captivity: inventory.

“ _Oh good, you're all conscious,”_ a disembodied voice so posh-sounding that it's nearly incomprehensible comes from what must be a sound system. It sounds like Thor if you combined him with Justin Hammer's smarm and turned him into an even more irredeemable douchebag. Steve crosses his arms, while Clint and Natasha look like they're about to spring into action at any given moment.

“ _You blew up my science station. On my planet, that's a criminal offense punishable by up to ten years of indentured servitude at the minimum, death at the maximum,_ ” the voice continued, as though it was reading the arts section of the New York Times. _“You are all to wait here until your punishment is deliberated upon. It should take about three to five of your business days.”_

 _“_ Where are we?” Steve demands, looking somewhere in the middle of the ceiling for lack of anyone to address.

“ _Good question, human. We are currently orbiting in the inner atmosphere of your planet. You interrupted our innocent surveying mission, so we have been forced to delay our entrance until we have taken care of this business of your trial._ ”

Tony exchanges an incredulous look with Bruce, who seems to be the only person more concerned with trying to mentally explain this current circus that with finding someone to throttle over it.

“ _You will be notified as soon as we've made a decision.”_ The voice announced, then a low beeping noise indicated that the connection had been cut.

Steve blows out a breath, then turns to address the room.

“Anyone interested in sticking around long enough for them to decide our fates?” He asks.

The room is oppressively silent.

“Didn't think so,” Steve says. His sense of humor might be a moving target, but Tony is always gratified when it comes around.

“Prison break, excellent,” Tony says, rubbing his hands together to feign an energy he in no way feels.

“Anyone got any bright ideas?” Clint asks, looking sour. “Nat, how'd you escape that prison compound in Slovenia in '02?” Natasha quirks a crooked and mostly humorless smile.

“You really don't want to know,” she replies grimly, “And besides, there's no way I could pull it off without a working two-way radio and a full set of lingerie.”

“Stark, if you ask any follow-up questions, I am leaving you behind as soon as we figure out how to get out of here,” Steve warns absently, already returning to his survey of their cell space.

Tony almost laughs, and forgoes a quip in response in favor of joining the team in searching for any obvious escape routes.

“We even got a door?” He asks. “I usually go for doors when I'm trying to leave a room, but that's a personal preference,” Tony says absently, trying not to let a shiver of raw fear crawl up his spine as the reality of the situation starts to creep in.

“Here,” Natasha beckons the team over to her corner of the room. She is sliding one sharply manicured nail along a ridge in the wall. There is an artfully disguised touch screen next to it. Tony's fingers twitch in delighted anticipation. There is nothing more terrifying about being in an ostensibly high tech spaceship camouflaged as an off-Broadway set piece, and this first sign of technology takes some of the edge off.

A cursory exam of the software reveals only that it is operating in a language about as far removed from English that it more closely resembles hieroglyphics. If only Thor weren't on Asgard, the man seemed to know every alien language that could come up in a conversation. As a matter of fact, those how ever many thousands of years of alien contact would really have been useful.

“Jarvis,” he murmurs. Thankfully, Tony's earpiece replies, more faintly than usual, but intelligible.

“ _Sir, I have managed to bypass the firewall and gain access to the network, but the language of the system is not translatable. I couldn't take control of the system without a considerable amount of legwork.”_

Tony shakes his head. “Alright, give me the probability that this door might be cracked with a regular old short circuit.”

There is an anxious pause.

“ _Optimistically, 63%, sir._ ”

Now that is good enough for government work.

“ _Sir, I would strongly advise-”_

“Rogers, think you could pry this panel out of the wall with your super-fingernails?” Tony asks. Steve looks as though he's steeling himself for the briefest of moments, then takes two long strides to place his fingers into the tiny space in between the screen and the wall. There is a pregnant pause as Steve pulls, the only physical tell he's exerting any effort being a small vein that pops out of his neck. After another moment, a heavy thud sounds, and the panel bursts out of the wall with an ear-shattering screech of metal on metal. Gloriously, the panel gives way to a colorful array of wiring that seems to run up and down the wall.

“It's Christmas,” Tony announces.

“Can you get the door open with that?” Steve asks, looking like he doesn't know what to do with the giant piece of alien tech in his hands.

“Need anything cut?” Clint asks, indicating at the swath of arrow glinting over his shoulder.

“I've 95 %-”

“ _63%, sir”_

 _“_ can it, Jarvis _-_ 99% sure that a power surge is going to short the locking mechanism, and then we'll be home free,” Tony explains.

“Come on Tony, even if you redirect the current through the amplifiers in the core, you'd only be able to generate a fraction of the energy you'd need to short the system,” Bruce protests.

“That, Dr. Banner, is very true,” Tony affirms, smirking, “But lucky for you all, I never leave the house without my handy generator,” he says, tapping on the arc reactor.

Bruce looks like he's doing some very fast mental math, then looks thoroughly unimpressed.

“How long can you make it without it?” Bruce asks, already wringing his hands. Nat, Clint, and Steve are all exchanging covert and studiously neutral looks.

Tony thinks back to the last time he'd gone for any amount of time without the arc reactor. The memory is already hazy, but it isn't hard to recall crawling through a pool of cold sweat with the sound of his heart thumping off rhythm drowning out any other noise. Not pretty. Feeling as disgusting as he does now probably won't add to the experience.

“Long enough,” Tony replies.

Steve shakes his head.

“We have to consider other options, first.”

“Oh, then how about we just get the Hulk to smash us out of here? Bruce, would you make sure to deliver my mutilated corpse to Pepper when you make that happen?” Tony asks.

Bruce just grits his teeth, while Clint seems haunted by that particular mental picture.

“Yeah, that's my vote for Plan A,” Clint says.

“Thank you,” Tony gestures at Clint, “anyone else prefer to make it out with all of our bits still attached?”

Natasha just cocks her head to the side in a “oh, what the hell?” gesture.

Steve and Bruce are expertly nonplussed, but can't seem to supply an alternate option.

“Fifteen seconds,” Bruce cautions.

“Roger that,” Tony makes a Yes, Sir gesture, then preps a couple of wires to connect to the arc reactor. In truth, the reactor has about ten times the juice to short most circuits, but this tech is elegant and unknown. There is a chance, however small, that the reactor won't be enough to withstand whatever power the ship is running on, but Tony chooses not to think about that, considering no matter how fast the team could commandeer the ship out, he'd be royally fucked with a capital Dead.

He tears the plastic covering off of a bunch of wires with his teeth, and then places them at the ready, for the arc reactor to complete the circuit.

“Just like hot wiring a car,” he explains, waggling his eyebrows. Then he takes a deep, steadying breath, and reaches for the reactor. “Who wants to do the honors?”

Steve sticks out his hand, looking as though Tony is about to hand him a live grenade. Well, Tony thinks, it might be a fairly apropos face.

“Not a scratch,” Tony warns, then pulls the mechanism that holds the reactor in place. His heart skips sickeningly as the device releases. Immediately, that cold, faint feeling washes over his body.

“Careful not to fry your fingers off,” he says, his voice pathetically thin already.

Steve flashes a quick sharp look, then completes the circuit. There's a flash of white hot sparks, and a dull boom from somewhere deep in the wall. Simultaneously, Steve pulls the reactor from the wall, and Tony feels his knees give way. He slips down the wall, but Natasha and Bruce miraculously manage to slow his descent, catching his shoulders and coaxing him down.

Tony can feel his heart working in painful fits and starts. It's hard to breathe, even harder than before. The edges of his vision are starting to blur. His breath is coming out as more of a wheeze.

“Give it to me,” Bruce demands, and moments later Tony can feel comforting pressure as the arc reactor is pressed back into place. In what's left of his vision, he can see the light flickering. Not great.

He wants to get back up, but his body clearly has other ideas. His peripheral vision is still hazy, and catching his breath doesn't seem like a viable goal option at the moment.

“Steve,” Natasha says. Tony hears a sounds that might be the sound of a door creaking open. Or he's hallucinating.

“Clint, Natasha, recon? Your com links still on?” Steve questions, and Tony feels some of the tension in his shoulders alleviate. It worked.

They must have nodded, because he hears their light footfalls fade into some unknown distance.

“You with us, Tony?” Bruce asks. Tony feels two fingers press into his neck, measuring his leaping, shuddering heartbeat.

He means to reply, but the second he opens his mouth, a wave of nausea sends him listing to the side to gag up what looks like phlegm liberally tinged with pink.

“This isn't good, Steve,” Bruce says. Tony really wants to conjure up something scathing, or witty, or even just a reassurance, but he can't trust his voice to work.

“Nat, update?” Steve speaks into the comm, urgent but level.

Natasha's voice comes through, just covered by enough static that Tony's struggling brain can't quite piece it together.

“I'm going in, Bruce,” Steve says, an edge of apology in his voice. “Can you manage here by yourself?”

“I've always got backup,” Bruce replies cryptically.

There is a short pause before Steve steps out.

Tony opens his eyes he hadn't remembered closing, and sees Bruce crouched next to him, face pinched.

“Stunt aside, you shouldn't have been in the field in the first place, not like this.”

“Oh sorry for busting us out, that one was my bad,” Tony manages to grit out. The effect is totally ruined as his voice tapers off into a metallic tasting wheeze.

“Tony, please, please shut up,” Bruce pleads. Tony smiles sweetly.

“Want to set some booby traps?”

Bruce looks to the side, schooling his expression carefully. He's clearly trying and failing to see zero fun in the situation.

“Which of these wires are live?” He asks, finally.

“Green and yellow,” Tony replies, and shifts uncomfortably against the wall for a better angle on the mess of semi-charred wiring. Bruce begins gingerly pulling the wires out and across the open doorway, about a foot off of the ground.

“Hey, does the Hulk see color? Or does he see in black and white like dogs?” Tony asks, gratified to hear Bruce's reluctant snort.

“Oh, or does he see colors like that mantis-shrimp thing? Like colors we lowly humans only dream of? Is the Hulk secretly part shrimp?” Tony continues. Bruce finishes securing the trip wire to the wall, and then gives Tony a furrowed-brow once over.

“I don't know about the shrimp thing, but something like that, actually,” Bruce returns mildly.

“I knew it, you've been holding out on me-”

“ _Nat's got control of the wheel, brace yourselves for a bumpy landing,_ ” Steve's voice cuts in over the comm.

“ _Very bumpy. This thing isn't like flying a 747_ ,” Natasha adds. Somehow, the image of the Black Widow flying a commercial airplane is infinitely less appealing than her commandeering a highly-advanced alien spaceship in order to emergency land.

 _“Guys, yeah, my bad - pretty sure I set off an alarm,_ ” the unmistakable thump of a body hitting the ground briefly cuts off Clint's voice, “ _Tony and Bruce, you're about to get company._ ”

In affirmation, a shriek of alarms begins to sound in the hallway, and there are distant footfalls thundering closer.

“Shit,” says Bruce. “This is only going to stop one or two of them, max.”

“Time for that backup?”

“I knew you were going to say that.”

After that moment, everything seemed to happen at once. The ground gave way sickeningly, forcing Tony to scramble for purchase in the empty room. There was a flash of vibrant green, and the sensation of weightlessness, and then Tony finally succumbs to the darkness in his vision.

  
  


-

  
  


The first thing Tony notices when he swims back to consciousness is the annoying feeling of plastic rubbing against his painfully unkempt facial hair. As reminiscent as it is of the last time he woke up with a plastic tube in his nose, it serves as a fantastic catalyst to bring him fully around.

Heart thumping, Tony scrambles at the tubing, another hand flying towards the arc reactor. He peels his eyes open, and blinks against the bright, whitewashed wall he sees in front of him.

Okay, not an Afghan cave, or an alien prison cell. A hospital, more likely.

Not exactly ideal, but it narrowly beats out the alien ship and the cave options.

He turns his head to one side and sees Bruce, sitting cross-legged in a chair next to a large window and flipping intently through a medical journal. He's wearing his glasses, and looks the perfect picture of a professor biding his time before an afternoon lecture, save for the fact that he's wearing clearly borrowed hospital scrubs.

“Where are we?” Tony asks, his voice barely present but hopefully audible enough. He really had thought that his days of waking up and not knowing what country he is in was something he left back in his hard partying days.

“Vancouver. Nat was shooting to land in the East coast, apparently. Not too bad, all things considered.” Bruce adjusts his glasses, and sits up straight.

“The team's okay. Fury's just got them trapped in a debrief that I'm sure will end some time this century.”

Tony lets out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, and then shakes his head. Immediately, pain radiates from his left collarbone down to his fingertips.

Bruce pulls a face.

“The other guy might have dislocated your shoulder. Sorry, he's not so good at the body guard thing.”

“Jesus, are all of my limbs attached?” Tony asks, giving himself a quick once over. Bruce winces. “Why aren't you in the war room, too?”

“Someone had to make sure you were still breathing. And make sure this hospital isn't a scam,” Bruce adds, warily.

“Aw, Bruce, using me to play hooky?”

“Guilty,” Bruce replies, but actually looks so guilty that it saps the fun out of it.

“Alright, then. Still breathing. What are we still doing here then?” Tony says, looking around to see if the hospital left his phone or watch within reaching distance.

Bruce stands up and paces once around the room, practically vibrating.

“Tony, you were in acute respiratory distress by the time we landed. You're lucky you aren't on a respirator. Or in a bodybag.”

Tony blames the almost-respiratory-failure for his lack of a suitably cheap comeback.

“Pepper's flying out from New York now. She should be here soon,” Bruce tells him, kindly ignoring the uncharacteristic silence.

Tony's heart warms at the thought of Pepper's presence, then turns ice cold when he thinks about the absolute dressing down he's about to get for going on a mission so sick. If he looks half as awful as he feels, maybe she'll go easy on him.

“You know, we got captured by a whole alien race and I didn't see a single one of the bastards. Tell me, Banner, are they more E.T. or Star Trek? Little green men? Don't tell me they all look like Thor-”

Bruce squints, and the corners of his mouth turn up a bit.

“Closer to Thor than ET.”

“Good God, that's terrifying.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who commented about how I should continue this story! I honestly didn't think I'd be able to find inspiration to finish this, but the enthusiasm was so helpful. This is, of course, a barely plotted, utterly goofy second chapter - but I was having fun! And Avengers should be FUN dammit!!! 
> 
> I will probably give this whole story an edit, and then add an epilogue that hopefully isn't so abrupt an ending, but this is what I have for now.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic, as you might have guessed, isn't finished. I don't really know what I want to do with it from here, but I don't want to drop it. So - seriously - if anyone has an requests/ideas for what to do, PLEASE comment! I'll totally credit you for getting me out of my slump.


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